Briefkaart aan Elsie Maud Cownie Possibly 1906

Philip Zilcken made this postcard to Elsie Maud Cownie at an unknown date, with ink on paper, which is so simple and somehow, really moving. You can see the whole history of its journey in the smudges and faded marks, like layers of time. I’m drawn to the handwriting, that careful, cursive script, which has a texture all of its own. Each loop and curve tells a story, not just of the words themselves, but of the hand that formed them. There's the trace of the pen as it moves across the paper. Looking at this, I think of Cy Twombly, another artist who understood how writing and mark-making could become a kind of visual poetry. But while Twombly's work is monumental, this postcard is intimate, a small, everyday object that holds a whole world of feeling. It is about seeing and experiencing the world.